The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (29 page)

letter from a prisoner being held in

Vorkuta in the north, who wrote

about his interrogations.

‘When they ask me who my

spiritual father is, I reply with

respect that it is the Holy Father

Dmitry Dudko . . . In Dmitry Dudko

I find the spiritual powers that help

me serve Jesus Christ,’ the letter

said.

If he ever doubted himself,

letters like that must have kept Father

Dmitry going, for he was under no

illusion that they could soon all be

arrested. He regularly hid the

surnames of people who wrote to

him, and now used the language of

war: ‘I don’t name surnames on the

principle that at the front it is

dangerous to pronounce them, since

the enemy may be listening.’

Together his friends and allies would

be strong enough to resist anyone,

however.

It was September 1979. The hot

Moscow summer was over, and the

leaves were turning gold and russet.

The first cold nights were biting, and

the geese were flying overhead,

honking, heading south, reminding

the people stuck on solid earth that

the cold times were coming. Father

Dmitry’s neighbours were piling

their hay into stacks in the barns and

the fields, and preparing to bring the

dairy herds indoors for the winter.

Father Dmitry was still pounding

away at his typewriter, however.

‘They ask us whether our militant

mood is not recklessness. We answer

that

it

is

less

reckless

than

compromises would be, since they

would give up our positions without

a fight.’

And a couple of weeks later, on

23 September, when night and day

are the same length and summer is

undoubtedly over, he returned to the

language of war. ‘In struggling

against our external enemies, against

their attacks and persecution, we

sometimes forget about or pay too

little

attention

to

our

internal

enemies. If the attacks of external

enemies serve to mobilize our forces,

to strengthen and unify us, then

internal enemies weaken our forces,

disorder our ranks, disturb our

unity.’

He denied repeatedly that his

language was political, or that he

was opposed to the Soviet Union,

but his words belied him. The film

student-turned-believer

Ogorodnikov was in prison by now,

and Father Dmitry described his

hunger strikes. He criticized the

Church for being controlled by the

Godless.

He

criticized

the

government for doing nothing to

save the nation from its despair. He

criticized the murder of the Russian

tsar by the Bolsheviks, and prayed

for the souls of the royal family.

Then on 11 November, he wrote

that his friend Yakunin, leader of the

Christian Committee, had been

arrested. The net around him was

tightening. The stress was getting to

his spiritual children too. Under the

constant harassment, the believers

were clearly beginning to argue

among themselves. He begged them

not to divide along ‘ethnic’ lines –

Sovietese for division into Russians

and Jews.

‘Let the words of the apostle “in

Christ there is no Greek nor Jew” be

not just words, but a rule for life,’ he

wrote, in a quotation (actually, a

misquotation) of St Paul’s letter to

the Galatians that he was particularly

fond of. ‘Free yourselves from

prejudice and received opinions.’

He sensed that a decisive battle

was close, that this was the calm

before a downpour. Ogorodnikov

and Yakunin were in prison, so he

was the last major Orthodox rebel

still at liberty, and the authorities

were saving him for last.

Outside his little world, the

whole dissident movement was

under assault. The security services

had been obsessed with squashing

the tiresome self-publicists for a

decade now. Solzhenitsyn, who was

exiled in 1974, brilliantly summed

up the state’s increasing paranoia,

with its insistence that everyone pull

together because ‘the enemies are

listening’.

‘Those eternal enemies are the

basis of your existence. What would

you do without your enemies? You

would not be able to live without

your enemies. Hate, hate no less an

evil than racism, has become your

sterile atmosphere,’ Solzhenitsyn

wrote in an open letter to the

Writers’ Union.

Dissident

opposition

to

the

authorities’ sterile atmosphere grew

despite the harassment, however,

and the arrests severely damaged the

Soviet Union’s international image.

The dissidents’ allies in the West

were lobbying hard to damage it

further, and proved very effective.

The policy of détente pursued by

Washington in the first half of the

1970s changed under the presidency

of Jimmy Carter, elected in 1976.

Activists in the United States,

particularly from Jewish groups, had

learned well how to lobby U S

officials and to demand that they put

pressure on the Soviet Union to

protect basic human rights. Carter

even wrote a personal letter to

Sakharov saying he would ‘use our

good offices to seek the release of

prisoners of conscience . . . I am

always glad to hear from you, and I

wish you well.’

For Jewish groups, the main

priority was the fate of the hundreds

of thousands of Soviet Jews who

wanted

to

emigrate

to

Israel.

American Jewish groups bombarded

their representatives with demands

that they take action, and sent cards

and letters to their kin the other side

of the Iron Curtain.

The Soviet Union did allow a

certain amount of emigration but

resented allowing young Jews that it

had educated and trained to go and

work in a capitalist country. It often

demanded they refund the cost of

their education before they leave,

which was all but impossible. The

Jewish activists maintained close

contacts with Western groups and in

1977 Natan Shcharansky, the most

famous of them, was charged with

treason. His conviction was a

foregone conclusion, and he used

the trial to shame the Soviet

government,

saying

how

investigators had threatened him

with execution if he did not

cooperate.

‘Five years ago, I submitted my

application for exit to Israel. Now

I’m further than ever from my

dream. It would seem to be cause for

regret. But it is absolutely otherwise.

I am happy. I am happy that I lived

honestly,

in

peace

with

my

conscience. I never compromised

my soul, even under the threat of

death,’ he said. He thanked his

supporters, among them the veteran

dissident Alexander Ginzburg and

the Moscow Helsinki Group founder

Yuri Orlov, both of whom were also

on trial.

‘I am proud that I knew and

worked with such honest, brave and

courageous people as Sakharov,

Orlov, Ginzburg, who are carrying

on the traditions of the Russian

intelligentsia . . . Now I turn to you,

the court, who were required to

confirm a predetermined sentence: to

you I have nothing to say.’

After his conviction in 1978, his

face

made

the

cover

of
Time

magazine with the crumbling word

‘détente’ above him as a headline.

He was in prison and his fate had

become synonymous for many

Westerners with the fate of the

whole

Soviet

people.

The

government in Washington was

finding it harder and harder to

prevent public anger over the Soviet

Union’s treatment of the dissidents

from destroying bilateral ties.

Other minorities had champions

too. Evangelical groups campaigned

on behalf of their co-religionists in

the Eastern Bloc, while broader

human rights groups kept the fate of

the

political

prisoners

in

the

headlines.

Despite opposition from the

White House, Congress had passed

the Jackson–Vanik Amendment in

1974, which made normal trade with

Moscow contingent on it allowing

Jewish and evangelical emigration.

That had hurt, and Moscow was in

no mood to be preached to. Under

Jimmy

Carter,

the

preaching

continued.

By 1979, even before Soviet

troops invaded Afghanistan, and the

United States began to pour money

into

the

saddlebags

of

the

mujahedin, there were no relations

left to salvage. The superpowers’

détente had failed.

This was bad news for Father

Dmitry and the remaining dissidents.

While there had existed some chance

that the Soviet Union could win

trade concessions, the Kremlin

abided by some of its international

obligations to protect human rights.

Now that that chance was gone, the

K G B had nothing to lose from

rounding up the last of the

troublemakers who polluted their

socialist

utopia.

The

Moscow

Helsinki Group of young dissidents

that attempted to hold the Soviet

Union to its international human

rights obligations was crushed. Yuri

Orlov, the group’s founder, like

Shcharansky refused to co-operate

with his investigators. He got seven

years in prison, plus five years in

exile. The Ukrainian, Georgian and

other nationalist groups were closed

down. Jewish organizations were

destroyed. The dissident Christians

were arrested.

By late autumn 1979, who was

left? The greatest of all the

dissidents, the Nobel Prize winner

Andrei Sakharov, was still at liberty,

fighting his tireless and lonely battle,

but he was all but alone now. His

allies had been picked off one at a

time. And Father Dmitry was almost

alone too.

This, for him, was Russia’s

crucifixion. After the crucifixion

would come the resurrection, which

he yearned for, so it was time for the

final fight. He appealed to all

believers in the country. They must

pray for the persecuted, for those

who, like their friends Yakunin and

Ogorodnikov, were not with them in

the last redoubt.

He had an ultimatum for those

who would imprison them, and a

demand of his followers: ‘All

actions, that one way or another help

the persecutors, must be stopped

immediately.’ He was calling on his

supporters to boycott the state.

This was more than a taunt. It

was revolution. It was practically

suicide.

‘Happily,’ he wrote of his

congregation, ‘only a few people are

scared. More new individuals are

coming, praise God. A religious

spring is beginning in Russia!’

Inside might be a religious

spring, but outside Father Dmitry’s

windows it was winter, by now 25

November. Snow had been on the

ground for a week or two, and the

temperature was below zero. He was

not deterred. As long as they

remained united, they had nothing to

fear.

But they did not remain united.

Just the next week, some of his

spiritual children – his footsoldiers,

the crucial support he needed in his

fight for the soul of the Russian

nation – had left him. They had not,

he wrote, even said goodbye. And

their departure was accompanied by

arguments, and arguments meant